Forastero to produce ‘Bird of Prey’

Pic is second effort from 'Square Meter' helmer Nayra Ilic

Chile’s Forastero, the company behind Golden-Globe nommed “The Maid” and 2012 Rotterdam Fest winner “Thursday Through Sunday,” is set to produce “Bird of Prey,” the second film from Nayra Ilic (“Square Meter”).

Also being written by Ilic, the crime thriller turns on a 65-year-old real estate magnate pursued by an unidentified stalker, as his daughter begins to unearth nasty secrets about her mother’s mysterious death. Josefina Undurraga and Gregorio Gonzalez produce for Forastero. One key character is foreign, opening the door to international co-production, Undurraga said at Toronto.

Winning the 2009 Work in Progress award at Chile’s Valdivia Festival, the country’s premier launch-pad for new talent, big-city apartment-set “Square Meter” played Palm Spring’s 2011 New Voices New Visions to an upbeat reception. Variety called it “sharply observed” praising its “filmic sophistication.”

“Prey” marks a change of direction for Ilic, however. With Isidora Marras’ “R. Lorena,” now shooting and co-produced with Argentina’s Carrousel Films, it is the second thriller on Forastero’s slate.

“Chilean cinema has a very strong auteur tradition, but genre movies, though not yet numerous, are increasing in number,” Constanza Arena, exec director of promo org Cinemachile, said at Toronto.